HERMAPHRODISM AND HYPOSPADIAS.
There exists a class of human beings whose description is connected with
the subject of this work. They date back to mythological times, and the
confusion incident to the misapplication of names and the want of proper
observation on the part of the narrators has tended to carry the
uncertainty of their real existence to the present day. One reason that
this part of the subject would be incomplete without their description
is on account of the origin of their existence being intimately
connected with eunuchism, being, in fact, an outgrowth of this
condition; and any history of eunuchism would be but half told, without
the additional information concerning these persons.
Hermaphrodites, as stated, date back to mythology. Tradition tells us
that Hermaphroditus, a son of Venus and Mercury, was educated by the
Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his
travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a
fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph
of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored of him, attempted to
seduce him. Hermaphroditus, like Joseph, was the pattern and mirror of
continence, and would not be seduced. Talmacis then, like Potiphar's
wife, seized on the unlucky pattern of virtue, and prayed to the gods
that they should so amalgamate poor Hermaphroditus to her body as to
make them one. The prayer was heard on Olympus, and forthwith the two
became one, but with the distinctive characteristics of each sex
unchanged. Thus began that fabled race of the _androgynes_ of the
ancients. Another tradition, which is probably correct, affirms that
ancient Carnia, or Halicarnassus, was in those days the Baden-Baden of
Asia Minor; that thither repaired all the victims of gluttony,
debauchery, and general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria
denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally
"Karnassus-by-the-sea," like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the
protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other.
Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human
nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young
and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, and nervous
wrecks, and the nymph who presided over the whole was Talmakis, a name
derived from the salty nature of the springs which fed the baths; this
nymph was worshiped as Aphrodite. Pederasty was one of the practices at
these baths. From these conjoined conditions the place was said to be
peopled with hermaphrodites,--meaning, at first, simply that they were
under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite; and latterly the name was
attached to the passive agent in the pederastic art,--a name that has
followed the class and crossed the ocean into the interior wilds of
America, as in Powell's history of the manners and customs of the
Omahas, an Indian tribe of the Missouri, we find that they at times
practiced pederasty, the passive agent being called by the Indians an
hermaphrodite, or double sexed.[38]
The relations that from eunuchism led to pederasty are very easy of
explanation. Eunuchism induces an effeminate form, softer body, and
prevents the growth of the beard; the voice is softer and more
melodious; and their timidity renders them also more effeminate,
obedient, and dependent. The peculiar commingling of the female form
with that of the male furnished to the sculptors the models for those
wonderfully well-made forms which are yet to be seen, representing in
statuary the forms of Androgynes and Hermaphrodites; that of the
favorite eunuch of the emperor Adrian being remarkable for the symmetry
of its form and grace of pose.
Europe must have been astonished at the tales that were carried back by
the early explorers and voyagers, in relation to the New World. The
story of the immensity of the quantity of gold and silver, of great
stores of hidden treasures, of the quantities of precious gems and
priceless crystals was fully discounted when, from the Florida coast and
the explorers of the Lower Mississippi, men returned with the tale that
in the everglades and in the trackless forests, intersected by navigable
sloughs, there dwelt a people half of whom were hermaphrodites. Neither
the explorers nor their European historiographers seem able to have
grasped the true state of affairs. Many believed in the actual existence
of such numbers of these monstrosities, while others, arguing from what
was then known regarding the extraordinary development of the nymphae and
clitoris, as well as of the great labia, of the women in the African
regions, concluded that these supposed _androgynes_, or hermaphrodites,
must be women, the dress assumed by these and the menial labors to which
they were consigned assisting to favor this opinion. The early
Franciscan missionaries to California found the men who were used for
pederasty dressed as women.[39] Hammond mentions the practice as in
vogue among the Indians of the southwest, which in a measure greatly
resembled that of the ancient Scythians in its operation, the men being
dressed as women, associating with women, and used for pederastic
purposes during the orgies of their festivals. These men had previously
been eunuchised by a process of continued and persistent onanism, which
caused at the end a complete atrophization of the testicle.
In regard to the great number of hermaphrodites observed in Florida and
on the Mississippi, the accounts are only reliable as far as they were
present in female garb and in an apparent state of slavery, being
compelled to do all the menial labor of the villages and camps, besides
being used for pederasty, no examination having been made by any
traveler. Their lot was different from those described by Hammond in his
work on "Male Impotence," where the whole transaction seems to have some
sort of religious and civil significance. In Florida, however, they
tilled the ground, extricated and carried off the dead during a battle,
and did all the work generally, being used for beasts of burden and not
allowed to cut their hair; but all authorities are silent or in complete
ignorance as to whether they had suffered castration. Pere Lafiteau,
however, gives an explanation which was in the last century considered
ridiculous, but which, in the light that has been thrown on the
existence of a former continent, and of the undisputable relation that
must, some ages in the past, have existed between Phoenicia and Central
America, seems a strongly probable solution of these customs. The Father
accounts for the presence of these American _androgynes_ in the
following manner: The Carribeans, or Caribs, were originally a colony
from Carnia; with these colonists was brought over the worship of their
Pagan gods of Caria and Phrygia; these two localities were the homes of
the Cybelian priesthood, who dressed in female garb, as did the
sacrificial priests of the Temple of Venus Urania. It is true that the
Java or Floridian priest had nothing in common with the priests of
Cybele or of Venus Urania; but, still, Lafiteau gave as lucid an
explanation for the existence of these conditions as any of his
contemporaries. Charlevoix observed the same practices among the
Illinois, which he attributed as being due to some principle of
religion. The Baron de la Hontan insists that the missionary,
Charlevoix, was mistaken; that the persons whom he saw in female attire,
whom he took to be men, were not men. Hontan asserts that they were
veritable hermaphrodites. The missionaries were, however, correct, as
what has since been observed confirms their opinion. M. du Mont, who
ascended the Mississippi for a distance of nine hundred leagues, also
reported meeting Indians at different places attended by these
petticoated androgynes.[40]
As strange as it may seem, many intelligent men were loth to part with
their belief in the existence of these double-sexed individuals; the
logic used by many of these insisters of hermaphrodism, although now
very ridiculous, was no doubt sensible logic one hundred and fifty years
ago. As a matter of curiosity, some of this reasoning will bear
repeating. It is taken from a Latin edition of an ancient description of
Florida, originally in the English, but translated into the Latin by the
geographer, Mercator. In this book we find the roots of some of the
myths that led Ponce de Leon and his steel-clad warriors to wander
through Florida in a vain search of that spring or fountain of the
waters of perpetual youth and of everlasting life which they were never
to find. We there learn that, in the days of the good old Spanish
knight, the inhabitants of Florida lived to a very old age, and that
they did not marry until very late in life, as before that period it was
very difficult to determine the sex of the individual.
From what has since been seen among the Indians, the probability is that
these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the
fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly
admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their
masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being
mentioned before circumcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals,
and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were surrounded, who
were, according to the Old Testament, about as an immoral, dissolute,
and bestial a set as one could well imagine. Their religions were
nothing but a gross mixture of stupid superstition and blind idolatry,
pederasty, fornication, and general cussedness. In the then state of the
Jewish nation, to have allowed them to mingle freely with these people
would have ended in having the Jews adopt all their customs and habits.
The aim of the Jewish leaders was to prevent any too free intercourse of
their people with these nations, that they might remain uncontaminated
even while dwelling near them. To accomplish this it was necessary to
raise a barrier that would be the distinguishing mark of the Jewish
nation. Jahns, in his learned work on the "History of the Hebrew
Commonwealths,"[41] lays down the idea that circumcision, as well as
many articles in their laws,--which to us appear trivial,--were in
reality intended to separate the Jews farther and farther from their
idolatrous, bestial, and heathenish neighbors, while at the same time
these same ordinances were intended to preserve a constant knowledge of
the true and only God, and maintain their moral and physical health.
Although hermaphrodism on a large scale, as an existing condition, was a
matter of serious belief at the end of the eighteenth century, it has
occupied no little attention in this. Courts have been called to decide
on cases to invalidate marriages, or to decide the sex, more than once;
and physicians are often asked the question, Do hermaphrodites really
exist? Dr. Debierre, of Lyons, published in 1886 a valuable paper,
entitled "Hermaphrodism Before the Civil Code: its Nature, Origin, and
Social Consequences," which was published in the _Archives of Criminal
Anthropology_ of Lyons, France. In this short but very concise treatise,
Debierre gives us a complete review of the subject from mythological
times to 1886. It must be quite evident to all that there exists no
logical reasons why the sexual or generative organs should be exempt
from, at times, being subject to variations from the normal, either
through the commingling of two conceptions or of faulty development
affecting other parts of the body,--conditions that go to form
monstrosities. Debierre gives one peculiar case of a duplication of
vagina and uterus in a girl of nineteen, the appearance of the parts and
the septum between the vaginae giving to the whole an appearance
precisely similar to that of a double-barreled shot-gun. These
monstrosities are as likely to happen as the different forms that
affect--either by arrested development or some abnormality of excessive
development--the head, which is a very prolific subject of anomalies.
Hermaphrodism is a common attribute in the vegetable kingdom, where
fixed habitation or position makes such a condition necessary; it is
also common to many of our lower forms of animal life, and even in the
human foetus the presence of the Wolfian bodies and the canal of Mueller
in the same individual attest a primitive case or condition of
hermaphrodism. In other words, humanity begins its existence in a state
of hermaphrodism. This condition is found up to the end of the second
month of foetal life in the human being, in common with all mammals, as
well as all the vertebrates, where, however, it is subject to variations
as to time of development and limit of existence in the normal
condition. In the chick, it is only after the fourth day that the
genital gland begins to determine whether it will turn into an ovary or
a testicle; in the rabbit it is on the fifteenth day, and in the human
embryo on the thirtieth day. Hermaphrodism does not occur, however, from
this at first uncertain state of affairs, but rather from subsequent
developments of the external organs that by their abnormality of
formation simulate one or the other sex, while the internal organs may
belong without any equivocation of structure to its definite sex; as it
has often happened that some of these cases, having been the subject of
differences of opinion among experts during life, were, after death,
unanimously assigned to one sex by all of the same experts, the organs
readily defining the sex being completely of the one sex. As observed by
Debierre, where the subject is really a female, even where the vagina or
uterus is unperceived, the presence of the menstrual function or some
physical disturbance at its stated periods are sufficient evidences, as
a rule, by which to determine the sex. The case of Marzo Joseph, or
Josephine, reported by Crecchio in 1865, had rudiments of an hypospadic
penis ten centimetres in length and a prostate of the male sex, with a
vagina 6 centimetres in length and 4 in circumference, ovaries,
oviducts, and uterus of the female; it was not until her death, at the
age of fifty-six, that her sex was fully determined. The case reported
by Sippel in 1880, supposed to be a male from external evidences, was at
death found to be a female. Guttmann reported a like case in 1882. The
celebrated case of Michel-Ann Dronart is remarkable; this case was
declared a male by Morand Pere and a female by Burghart, as well as by
Ferrein; declared asexual or neutral by the Danish surgeon, Kruger; of
doubtful sex by Mertrud. The case of Marie-Madeleine Lefort, to which
Debierre devotes four figures, is full of interest. One of the figures
is her portrait at the age of sixteen, and another is from her
photograph at the age of sixty-five. She has a man's head in every
particular of physiognomy and expression, having in the latter figure a
full beard and the peculiar intellectual development of a male sage; she
has the hairy breast of the man, with the mammary development of the
female, and an abnormally-enlarged clitoris, which was often mistaken
for the male organ. The vagina at its lower end was narrow, and the
urethral aperture opened into it some distance from its outer opening;
otherwise she was sexually a perfect woman, and menstruated regularly.
Debierre quotes the case which Duval gives in his work on
hermaphrodites, wherein a man asked for a dissolution of marriage,
claiming that his wife had a male organ, which, although she was a woman
in every other sense, prevented by its interference the consummation of
the marriage act. The court had the case examined, when it was found
that the erection of the clitoris, which was large, was enough to
interfere as the husband had stated. It decreed that the young woman
should have the objectionable and interfering member amputated, and on
the refusal to have this done the marriage should be dissolved. She
refused, and the divorce was consequently granted to the man.
From the history of Marie Lefort, it can well be conceived how the
popular mind, in ignorant times, could easily be imposed upon. Montaigne
relates the history of a Hungarian soldier who was confined of a
well-developed infant while in camp, and of a monk brought to a
successful accouchement in the cell of a convent; while Duval reports
the case of a priest in Paris who was found to be pregnant with child,
who was in consequence imprisoned in the prison of the ecclesiastical
court. These cases were strongly females in every sense, but with some
male characteristic sufficiently developed, like in the case of Marie
Lefort, to allow them to believe themselves men and to pass for such.
On the other hand, males have had some female characteristics so well
pronounced that they have passed for females. Debierre mentions a number
of cases, to wit: Ambroise Pare reported such a case in his time;
Ladowsky, of Reims, reports the case of Marie Goulich, who, up to the
age of thirty-three, was believed to be a female, at which time the
descent of the testicles removed all doubts as to sex. Sheghelner and
Cheselden have reported analogous cases, and Girand's case--who was
happily married to a man with whom he lived until the death of the
husband, in which the only female attribute was a blind vagina, which,
in his case, seems to have answered all purposes--was a most remarkable
case. As a rule, the cases of males who have been mistaken for
hermaphrodites have been cases of hypospadic urethrae in a greater or
lesser sense of deformity.
Debierre, however, mentions some cases of true hermaphrodism. He quotes
a number of cases, the earliest being from the writings of Coelius
Rhodigin, who claimed to have seen in Lombardy a case in which the
organs of the two sexes were side by side; Ambroise Pare records that in
1426 a pair of twins were born, joined back to back, wherein both were
hermaphrodites. Among the many reporters that he quotes, he mentions
Rokitansky, who reported a case in 1869, at Vienna, this being the
autopsy of Hohmann, who had two ovaries and oviducts, a rudimentary
uterus, and a testicle, with a sperm-duct containing spermatozoa. This
individual menstruated regularly, and it is an interesting question as
to what the result would have been had some of the spermatic fluid come
in contact with some of the ovules that were periodically discharged.
Hohmann had an imperforate penis and a bifide scrotum. Ceccherelli, who
gives a more minute description of this interesting case, relates that
Hohmann, who died at the age of forty, had menstruated regularly to the
age of thirty-eight. The penis was imperforate but hypospadic, from
whence came the urinary and spermatic discharges, and Hohmann could in
turn copulate as either male or female. Odin is also quoted in relation
to the case seen at the Hotel-Dieu-de-Lyon, during the service of M.
Bondet. The subject was aged sixty-three, and named Mathieu Perret. The
case greatly resembled that of Hohmann, at the autopsy being found to be
double sexed. So that, while most of the cases mentioned are fictitious
and only apparent, the fact remains that the existence of true
hermaphrodites is indisputable.[42]
If the subject of either apparently or true hermaphrodism is one of
unhappiness, and oftentimes of discomfort and misery, history relates
that this unfortunate class has suffered additionally, from the laws and
action of ignorant and barbarian times, as such freaks of nature must
of necessity have occurred at all times; only in the then ignorant state
of medicine and anatomy they must have been considered as occurring much
oftener--every deviation from the normal being considered as
hermaphroditic. Opmeyer relates that in excavating in the neighborhood
of the capitol in Rome, the laborers discovered the bronze tables on
which were inscribed the twenty-two laws of Romulus, termed by many
historians "The Double Decalogue of Romulus." Article XV of this law, as
well as Articles IX and X, seem to be directed against the life of these
androgynes. In Roman history, however, we have an event which would seem
to contradict that there existed any laws in actual force against this
unfortunate class. It happened during the existence of the Punic wars,
when the people were more or less laboring under fear and excitement,
which would readily prepare them to accept any superstitious notion. It
was during these times that three of these androgynes were known to
exist in Italy. Titus Livius mentions that the existence of one of these
was denounced during the consulships of C. Claudius Nero and of Marcus
Livius. Etruscan soothsayers and seers were summoned to Rome, that they
might consult the signs and the conditions of the constellations that
accompanied the nativity of this hermaphrodite, or androgyne. These
impostors, after a careful consultation of all attending circumstances,
gave it as their opinion that the occurrence was an unfortunate
impurity, and that it could only result to the disadvantage of Rome,
unless she at once took steps to purify herself of such a monstrosity,
with the conclusion that the androgyne should be first exiled from Roman
soil, and then drowned in the depths of the sea. The unfortunate being
was accordingly inclosed in a chest and put on board a galley, which
put immediately to sea; when the vessel was out of sight of land the
chest was thrown into the Mediterranean.[43]
A hermaphrodite born in Umbria during the consulship of Messalus and C.
Lucinius was condemned to death, as well as was the one born at Luna
during the consulship of L. Matellus and Q. Fabius Maximus. Debierre
states that in the reign of Nero this barbarous custom was discontinued,
as this emperor admired these freaks of nature from their novelty, as it
is related that his chariot was drawn by four hermaphroditic horses.[44]
In connection with hermaphrodism it has been shown that the males who
have been supposed to be so malformed were really, in most instances,
but cases of hypospadias. It may not be uninteresting to observe that,
while during nearly four thousand years circumcision has been practiced
without the habit or condition ever having become transmissible or
hereditary, hypospadias has shown a decided tendency to being
transmitted. In Virchow's _Archives_, Lesser reports having treated
eight subjects during one generation in a family.[45] Fodere records the
case of hypospadias reported by Schweikard, in a person of forty-nine
years of age, whose urethral orifice was near the junction of the penis
and scrotum, but who, nevertheless, had three fine children. The same
author records the remarkable case reported by Hunter to the Royal
Society of London, also so deformed, who successfully impregnated his
wife by receiving the spermatic fluid in a warm spoon and immediately
injecting it into the vagina.[46] Another interesting case is taken from
_L'Union Medicale_ of August 26, 1856. It instances both the heredity
connected with hypospadias and the peculiar circumstances under which
impregnation at times takes place; it is reported by Dr. Trexel, of
Kremsier, and is as follows: "On April 1, 1856, a newborn infant was
brought to Dr. Trexel, that he might determine its sex. The father and
mother were servants of a peasant. On an examination of the alleged
father, he was found to have all the external characters of a male; the
urethra, which was rather shorter than ordinary, but of large size, was
imperforate; the scrotum was divided into two pouches, each containing a
testicle. The apposed surfaces of the scrotal pouches were covered with
a red skin, and the division extended through their entire length. At
the root of the penis, in the anterior angle of these pouches, was an
opening of the size of a lentil; this was the orifice of the urethra.
The lower surface of the penis was grooved from the above-mentioned
orifice to the end of the glans. There was no prepuce. Almost in a line
behind the corona of the glans, and in the groove, were two elliptical
openings, which readily admitted a large hog-bristle; there was a third
smaller opening two lines from the orifice of the urethra. This man had
always passed for a woman. He lay in the same room with the mother of
the child; and they acknowledged having had frequent connection. The
woman declared that she had had no commerce with any other man for three
years, and the man did not deny this assertion. The idea of cohabitation
with another man was further negatived by the circumstance that the
infant had the same conformation of the genital organs as the father.
How did fecundation take place? The three openings in the penis were
probably the orifices of the excretory ducts of Cowper's glands. But
might not these have been the openings of the ejaculatory ducts? It is
to be regretted that Dr. Trexel did not examine these canals; their
length and direction would have thrown light on the subject. The fact
of fecundation may also be explained by supposing that during coition
the posterior wall of the vagina supplied the place of the absent floor
of the urethra, thus forming a complete canal. This is the most probable
explanation."[47]
The above case, as stated, had passed for a woman; these cases are by no
means such rarities. The case of Marie Dorothee, mentioned by Debierre
in his work, was as peculiar. Hufeland and Marsina had pronounced Marie
a woman, while Stark and Martens pronounced her a man, and Metzger could
not determine on the sex. The case of Valmont, noticed by Bouillaud and
Manee, is on a par with that of Giraud, in which the party was married
as belonging to one sex and where it was not until after death
ascertained that the person belonged to the other sex. Valmont had a
hypospadic urethra and penis; a scrotum without testicles; ovaries with
the Fallopian tubes; a uterus opened into a vagina of two inches in
length, which, gradually narrowing, ended in the male urethra, to which
was attached a prostate gland. Valmont contracted marriage as a man and
was not discovered to have been a female until the autopsy revealed her
to be a woman. The relation does not state anything in regard to
menstruation; so that her condition in that regard is unknown.[48]
There has also been reported a number of cases in the male analogous to
the double organed female mentioned by Debierre. Geoffrey St. Hilare
reports a case where the penis was double, one being above the other,
urine and semen flowing through both urethras. Gore mentioned a like
case to the Academy in 1844. Dr. Vanier (Du Havre) records the case
reported by Huguier to the Academy, where the organs in the anatomical
preparation which he exhibited were so anomalous that it was impossible
to decide the sex. Aside from the medico-legal aspects that these cases
present, there is an interesting Jewish theological question connected
with them. The law is explicit as to circumcision; the cases presenting,
if males, should be circumcised, but how to determine the sex where an
autopsy alone will decide the question is not defined. It has been
decided, in such cases where the presumption is that the child is of the
male sex, that, like in cases of absence of prepuce, a suppositious
circumcision should be performed, so that the covenant should be
observed; this being in keeping with the sentiment shown by the Jews
when persecuted by the Romans, or, later, by the Spaniards, who often
were not able to circumcise until after death; but they never fail to
comply with the covenant as far as it is possible.
Cases are liable to occur, however, which, without leaving the question
as to sex in doubt, if reasoned by exclusion, would not furnish any
possible opportunity for circumcision. Such a case is reported in
Virchow's _Archives_, vol. cxxi, No. 3; also in the _British Medical
Journal_ of December 6, 1890, and in the _Satellite_ for January, 1891.
It is one of congenital absence of penis. "Dr. Rauber records very
briefly the case of a shoe-maker, aged 38, who complained of pain and
trouble in the anus. On examining him, Rauber found a well-formed
scrotum containing two testicles, each with a vas deferens and spermatic
cord, but no trace of a penis. The urethra opened apparently into the
anterior wall of the rectum. The man occasionally experienced sexual
excitement, followed by an emission into the rectum. The burning pain
complained of in the rectum and about the anus was due to the irritation
caused by the urine. The man would not allow an ocular inspection of
the interior of the rectum. Unfortunately, the details of this very rare
condition are incomplete."
It would be interesting to know where the seat of his sexual desire is
situated, unless an aching testicle is such. I once knew a Spiritualist
who claimed to feel the pains suffered by any friends with whom he was
in sympathy; he once tried to argue with me that a certain lady
patient--a warm personal friend of my questioner and a Spiritualist--had
ovaritis, because he felt an intense burning pain in his _right ovarian
region_ whenever he went near to her. I tried to reason with him that
that pain should be in his right testicle, but he would insist on having
the sympathetic pain in _his_ ovarian region.